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Eat Them Alive
Dyke Mellis hated the world with a passion; he was just waiting for a chance to strike back at the people who had ripped away his manhood and crippled his body. And then, that fateful day when Malpelo Island spilt open and the creatures emerged, his chance came—a bloodier and more terrible chance than he had ever dreamed of...
But as his dreadful plan began to work and his monstrous legion of bloodthirsty giants wreaked their terror he was faced with a new horror... would they destroy him before they reached his enemies?
But as his dreadful plan began to work and his monstrous legion of bloodthirsty giants wreaked their terror he was faced with a new horror... would they destroy him before they reached his enemies?
253 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews
November 17, 2016
Is it good? No. Is there anything else like it out there? No. Singular and ridiculous, like getting a note from the prison cell of your least favorite third cousin after he's arrested for having sex with a corpse. You can't throw it away, but do you really want to read it?
December 23, 2022
Sensational. The only book I read twice this year, nearly back-to-back. The first time I embraced the shock and the second I simply admired how it was all done. This should be back in print as a leatherbound edition, complete with red ribbon bookmark.
May 12, 2024
I’ve read a lot of books and I’ve never read anything like this. Completely unhinged.
June 14, 2024
From Too Much Horror blog :
amateurish, moronic, thoughtless, sadistic, repetitive schlock with no redeeming value whatsoever. What enjoyment there is comes in the form of disbelief. You'll be amazed at the lack of any attempt at realism in any aspect. You'll be astounded at the depraved depths to which the author can descend!
THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS
I only just heard about this 1977 lunatic horror novel and it sounded like fun, so I thought I’d get a nice cheap sleazy looking hopefully stained copy and read it, but I couldn’t because it’s out of print and people are charging CRAZY SKY HIGH prices. But then I found that some kindly soul had done an audio book of it and put the whole thing on Youtube! Problem solved.
PRAYING MANTISES! THOUSANDS OF THEM! THE SIZE OF A MAN!
So here is a short summary of a book you will probably not read.
A man in a boat off a Columbian island observes an earthquake followed by a tsunami. Back on land he then can’t but notice that thousands of giant praying mantises are pouring forth from fissures in the very ground caused by the earthquake. And they are so hungry. So they are eating people.
Our hero is called Dyke and is 25 years old and he has an alarming back story. It seems he has been roaming the world committing all kinds of crimes, torturing people and so forth. He is no boy scout. And he had a disagreement with four of his shady chums and they beat him soundly and he was “robbed of his manhood” eleven years ago. Since then life has lost some of its sparkle. But now, Dyke feels excited and happy again, watching the mantises eat people. One of them even eats his only friend in Colombia – slowly! And it gets his juices flowing! So he decides to become King of the Mantises. That will show everybody.
He lures a mantis by offering it frozen sheep from his extraordinarily large boat refrigerator, then he captures it by using a steel reinforced net which he always carries because he is a tough hunter of wild beasts even though now he is without his manhood.
Dyke’s eyes had a molten steel stare that used to knuckle victims to their knees. His eyes compensate for the zigzag of awful scars all over his face and body. He had jet black shoulder length hair. "But he was a eunuch now. He could never marry". Not even a mantis. We will come to that sad episode.
THEY WERE A DEATH DEALING MANHOOD DESTROYING BOY BAND.
In a flashback we learn that the leader of this boy band was a boy who did not know what kindness was. Ryan Gout was the leader but Pete Stuart was the meanest, he gouged out people’s eyes and his favourite hobby was maiming children just for fun. He would laugh as he did so.
The gang was tired of kicking out old ladies’ brains for fifty dollars. They wanted to steal a million dollars. Pete says he has a bottle of nitro so they can blow a safe. And he knows where one is. So off they go, to Old Man Shield’s place. Whoever he is. They’re going to ring his doorbell, roll him around on the ground and knife him a little. So they do all that and chop up the old man. There is a lot of chopping, two or three pages. “Zeb’s blood red knife followed Pete’s into the heart section.” The old geezer is well dead “yet the boys cut on”.
So they blow up the old geezer’s safe and find a fortune in dollar bills.
After some post-robbery contemplation Dyke decides to rob all the loot for himself. Unfortunately he is discovered by the gang who whip out their flick knives and begin slicing with glee. “I’ll pull his socks off so we can get at his toes”. But it’s not his toes Dyke worries about.
“No don’t cut me there, cut me anywhere, but leave me that!” he whimpers.
But they do cut him there and leave him to die like a dog in the desert.
But luckily some local vaqueros rescue him and patch him up, including blood transfusions.
I’LL CALL HIM SLAYER
I’ll teach this mantis who he is and to come when I call.. I’ll call him Slayer!
Dyke trains Slayer. He figures that it will take two months to fully train him, and also to make “some kind of potion” that will stop Slayer or any other mantis from eating him.
At this point Dyke catches a local man stealing from his store of food. He feeds him to Slayer. Ten page description of the ensuing meal. Slayer loves eating people alive, what’s the fun in eating dead people right? And Dyke gets his jollies watching Slayer. It’s a match made in heaven. Dyke wonders what it would be like to be eaten by Slayer – for a long time. “His own death would not exhilarate him".
Dyke makes his repellent potion. Pages about this. Finally, after a long process in which an anteater dies, he smears his arm with this horrible stuff and forces his feet to walk to Slayer’s cage, thinking “What if Slayer bites off my arm and chews it up before my eyes?... I wonder what it’s like watching a beast eat part of your body while you are helpless to prevent the gruesome snack?”
I’m sure we all wonder that from time to time.
“As the mantis stopped to catch his breath” …. Wait a minute, even I know that insects don’t have lungs…. Oh anyway, this is nitpicking…. Dyke muses :
I think I could see Slayer swim in a sea of blood and I could swim in it with him, especially if it was the blood of people, of men, of the four men I hate with all my guts. An ocean of blood wouldn’t sicken me… I could spend my whole life seeing him eat men alive…
Enough! I think I can see where this is going. There will be pages about Slayer eating people and Dyke enjoying it. He will track down the boy band and Slayer will eat them one by one with mean Pete left till last. And finally the potion will wear off and Slayer will eat Dyke. If anybody finished this astonishingly ridiculous novel, written in the same English language that Henry James used to write The Golden Bowl, then maybe they will let me know.
I will never look at a six feet tall praying mantis in the same way again.
amateurish, moronic, thoughtless, sadistic, repetitive schlock with no redeeming value whatsoever. What enjoyment there is comes in the form of disbelief. You'll be amazed at the lack of any attempt at realism in any aspect. You'll be astounded at the depraved depths to which the author can descend!
THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS
I only just heard about this 1977 lunatic horror novel and it sounded like fun, so I thought I’d get a nice cheap sleazy looking hopefully stained copy and read it, but I couldn’t because it’s out of print and people are charging CRAZY SKY HIGH prices. But then I found that some kindly soul had done an audio book of it and put the whole thing on Youtube! Problem solved.
PRAYING MANTISES! THOUSANDS OF THEM! THE SIZE OF A MAN!
So here is a short summary of a book you will probably not read.
A man in a boat off a Columbian island observes an earthquake followed by a tsunami. Back on land he then can’t but notice that thousands of giant praying mantises are pouring forth from fissures in the very ground caused by the earthquake. And they are so hungry. So they are eating people.
Our hero is called Dyke and is 25 years old and he has an alarming back story. It seems he has been roaming the world committing all kinds of crimes, torturing people and so forth. He is no boy scout. And he had a disagreement with four of his shady chums and they beat him soundly and he was “robbed of his manhood” eleven years ago. Since then life has lost some of its sparkle. But now, Dyke feels excited and happy again, watching the mantises eat people. One of them even eats his only friend in Colombia – slowly! And it gets his juices flowing! So he decides to become King of the Mantises. That will show everybody.
He lures a mantis by offering it frozen sheep from his extraordinarily large boat refrigerator, then he captures it by using a steel reinforced net which he always carries because he is a tough hunter of wild beasts even though now he is without his manhood.
Dyke’s eyes had a molten steel stare that used to knuckle victims to their knees. His eyes compensate for the zigzag of awful scars all over his face and body. He had jet black shoulder length hair. "But he was a eunuch now. He could never marry". Not even a mantis. We will come to that sad episode.
THEY WERE A DEATH DEALING MANHOOD DESTROYING BOY BAND.
In a flashback we learn that the leader of this boy band was a boy who did not know what kindness was. Ryan Gout was the leader but Pete Stuart was the meanest, he gouged out people’s eyes and his favourite hobby was maiming children just for fun. He would laugh as he did so.
The gang was tired of kicking out old ladies’ brains for fifty dollars. They wanted to steal a million dollars. Pete says he has a bottle of nitro so they can blow a safe. And he knows where one is. So off they go, to Old Man Shield’s place. Whoever he is. They’re going to ring his doorbell, roll him around on the ground and knife him a little. So they do all that and chop up the old man. There is a lot of chopping, two or three pages. “Zeb’s blood red knife followed Pete’s into the heart section.” The old geezer is well dead “yet the boys cut on”.
So they blow up the old geezer’s safe and find a fortune in dollar bills.
After some post-robbery contemplation Dyke decides to rob all the loot for himself. Unfortunately he is discovered by the gang who whip out their flick knives and begin slicing with glee. “I’ll pull his socks off so we can get at his toes”. But it’s not his toes Dyke worries about.
“No don’t cut me there, cut me anywhere, but leave me that!” he whimpers.
But they do cut him there and leave him to die like a dog in the desert.
But luckily some local vaqueros rescue him and patch him up, including blood transfusions.
I’LL CALL HIM SLAYER
I’ll teach this mantis who he is and to come when I call.. I’ll call him Slayer!
Dyke trains Slayer. He figures that it will take two months to fully train him, and also to make “some kind of potion” that will stop Slayer or any other mantis from eating him.
At this point Dyke catches a local man stealing from his store of food. He feeds him to Slayer. Ten page description of the ensuing meal. Slayer loves eating people alive, what’s the fun in eating dead people right? And Dyke gets his jollies watching Slayer. It’s a match made in heaven. Dyke wonders what it would be like to be eaten by Slayer – for a long time. “His own death would not exhilarate him".
Dyke makes his repellent potion. Pages about this. Finally, after a long process in which an anteater dies, he smears his arm with this horrible stuff and forces his feet to walk to Slayer’s cage, thinking “What if Slayer bites off my arm and chews it up before my eyes?... I wonder what it’s like watching a beast eat part of your body while you are helpless to prevent the gruesome snack?”
I’m sure we all wonder that from time to time.
“As the mantis stopped to catch his breath” …. Wait a minute, even I know that insects don’t have lungs…. Oh anyway, this is nitpicking…. Dyke muses :
I think I could see Slayer swim in a sea of blood and I could swim in it with him, especially if it was the blood of people, of men, of the four men I hate with all my guts. An ocean of blood wouldn’t sicken me… I could spend my whole life seeing him eat men alive…
Enough! I think I can see where this is going. There will be pages about Slayer eating people and Dyke enjoying it. He will track down the boy band and Slayer will eat them one by one with mean Pete left till last. And finally the potion will wear off and Slayer will eat Dyke. If anybody finished this astonishingly ridiculous novel, written in the same English language that Henry James used to write The Golden Bowl, then maybe they will let me know.
I will never look at a six feet tall praying mantis in the same way again.
October 2, 2009
Back when pulp horror was at its all time peak, the gloriously entitled ‘Eat Them Alive’ was unleashed into the now overflowing world of pulp horror novels. First published in the US by Manor Books Inc and then soon after released in the UK through (you guessed it) New English Library, this monstrous blot on the literary world was to therefore sport two separate editions, each with its own so utterly unashamed ‘pulp horror’ piece of cover artwork. The author, Pierce Nace, is other than from this novel, otherwise unknown; although there is a good chance that the name is potentially a pseudonym that has never been admitted to.
The novel begins with the introduction of the principal character of Dyke Mellis; a man consumed with hate for four of his old friends. This hate has been smouldering away for the past eleven years of his mundane existence. Dyke no longer feels he is a complete man, after he was made a eunuch by these four individuals (Pete Stuart, Zeb Hillburn, Kane Garrister and Ryan Gaut) after he tried and failed in stealing a considerable amount of money from all of them. His body is now a tapestry of scars reminding him of the pain and suffering they caused when they tortured him and left him for dead.
Now eleven years later, Dyke is on his boat just off the shores of the small island of Malpelo, when a massive earthquake hits. A tidal wave engulfs the island, whilst huge cavernous cracks appear in the landscape. Almost immediately after the destruction has subsided, giant man-sized mantises swarm out from these gaping splits in the earth. The ravenous giant insects soon take to slaughtering and consuming each and every one of the natives that inhabit the small piece of land. Dyke watches all of this happening from the relative safety of his boat and begins to formulate a plan.
Dyke succeeds in capturing the largest of the beasts, which he takes off the island, hoping he can gradually build up a state of trust with the beast so that he can be its master. He names this special mantis ‘Slayer’ and paints its head bright red to further distinguish it from the other mantises. Dyke has a plan in mind. A plan to take a small army of these bloodthirsty and monstrous insects over to the mainland so that he can enact the cruellest, most horrendous revenge he can think of on the four men who savaged him all those years ago. Dyke wants to see each one of them eaten alive!
After coating his entire body in a concoction that he discovers repels the mantises, so that he won’t be eaten by any of them, Dyke trains his new pet ‘Slayer’ to trust him and slowly over the following months builds up a friendship with this particular beast.
Soon enough the time has come when Dyke is ready to take Slayer and a further twenty carefully selected giant mantises to the mainland where he will track down the four men he plans to kill. His revenge on these four is all he cares about in the entire world. But man was never meant to attempt to tame such savage and ruthless beasts as these prehistoric insects....
Nace has managed to come up with possibly the wildest and most far fetched storyline that has ever existed. This is pulp horror at its absolute peak. A hate fuelled man who commands a small army of giant mantises, is out for revenge on four men who cut off his manhood. This is sheer pulp horror genius...
From the moment the mantises first grace the pages, the blood spill and sheer carnage is almost unrelenting until the novel crashes to its final ending. No exaggeration, this is splatter piled on splatter piled on splatter. Nace barely comes up for a breath before more bone crunching, head splitting, brain eating and blood drinking ensues once again.
Nace’s writing style is amateurish to say the least, throwing together a litany of clumsy and awkward sentences that seem to carrying on forever. The tale is so over-packed with splatter, that it appears to be repeating the same old carnage again and again.
However preposterous the concept of the novel is, Nace takes the storyline to even further degrees when the lead character of Dyke Mellis develops what appears to be some sort of mental connection with his lead mantis - Slayer. This badly developed and utterly ridiculous addition to the tale was clearly done because the author couldn’t think of a good way to get around the communication boundaries between Dyke and his mantis ‘friend’ Slayer. However laughable the storyline is, this laziness simply creates a head-in-hands moment of cringing for the reader.
Later on, our good friend Slayer decides to take a nice big juicy bite out of Dyke’s leg, chomping away one entire calf. If only the human body healed the way Nace seems to think it does. If it did, we’d be almost indestructible. A tourniquet and a bandage later and Dyke is running around once again, minus one entire calf!
Dyke finally begins his revenge, surprisingly starting off with his most hated of the four men; the ringleader of his brutal assault all those years ago – Pete Stuart. You would have thought that Nace would have saved Stuart for last, but no, he is the first to be dispatched in the all too familiar display of graphic carnage.
The storyline then follows Dyke as he enacts almost exactly the same revenge on each of the remaining three men and their families, until his mission in life is finally complete. By the third and forth such slaughter, the repetitiveness of this is beginning to get a little boring. However, Nace keeps ramming in page upon page of blood spill to keep the gore-fest running at full pelt.
The conclusion (with its minor twist laced with a healthy slab of irony) is as dramatic as the rest of the novel has been. The novel ends in the way it has been throughout; with gallons more blood spill and mass mutilation depicted in all its graphic detail.
For the unashamed pulpiness of the novel, I was so tempted to give the novel a high overall rating. Not to mention calling the main killer mantis ‘Slayer’ – you can almost hear ‘Angel of Death’ playing away in the background of each scene of mass carnage. But there are way too many aspects that stand against the novel. Nace’s writing style for one is far too amateurish to keep a good flow to the storyline going. Lack of variation makes the endless carnage become tiresome – perhaps the worst sin possible for a pulp horror novel. The storyline is too flat and singular, with little to no secondary elements to the tale developing along the storyline. But the final nail is put in the coffin by the repeated laziness of the author with various aspects of the story that have led Nace to come up with the most ridiculous cop-outs in the history of horror novels (and that really is quite some claim).
All in all, ‘Eat Them Alive’ is what it is. It’s pulp horror taken to its pulpy extremes. It’s both the epitome and the peak of the genre. It’s fast paced and packed with splatter almost from cover to cover. There’s no escaping it, this is a novel of enjoyment for those who really should know better. It’s got so many faults, but that’s almost what makes it so the much greater. I can’t rate it highly because that in itself would be an injustice on the books nature. It still remains the most ridiculous and wildly over-the-top pulp horror novel that there ever was. You’ll either love it or hate it. But I urge each and every one of you to read a copy. I promise you won’t regret it...
The novel runs for a total of 158 carnage filled pages.
The novel begins with the introduction of the principal character of Dyke Mellis; a man consumed with hate for four of his old friends. This hate has been smouldering away for the past eleven years of his mundane existence. Dyke no longer feels he is a complete man, after he was made a eunuch by these four individuals (Pete Stuart, Zeb Hillburn, Kane Garrister and Ryan Gaut) after he tried and failed in stealing a considerable amount of money from all of them. His body is now a tapestry of scars reminding him of the pain and suffering they caused when they tortured him and left him for dead.
Now eleven years later, Dyke is on his boat just off the shores of the small island of Malpelo, when a massive earthquake hits. A tidal wave engulfs the island, whilst huge cavernous cracks appear in the landscape. Almost immediately after the destruction has subsided, giant man-sized mantises swarm out from these gaping splits in the earth. The ravenous giant insects soon take to slaughtering and consuming each and every one of the natives that inhabit the small piece of land. Dyke watches all of this happening from the relative safety of his boat and begins to formulate a plan.
Dyke succeeds in capturing the largest of the beasts, which he takes off the island, hoping he can gradually build up a state of trust with the beast so that he can be its master. He names this special mantis ‘Slayer’ and paints its head bright red to further distinguish it from the other mantises. Dyke has a plan in mind. A plan to take a small army of these bloodthirsty and monstrous insects over to the mainland so that he can enact the cruellest, most horrendous revenge he can think of on the four men who savaged him all those years ago. Dyke wants to see each one of them eaten alive!
After coating his entire body in a concoction that he discovers repels the mantises, so that he won’t be eaten by any of them, Dyke trains his new pet ‘Slayer’ to trust him and slowly over the following months builds up a friendship with this particular beast.
Soon enough the time has come when Dyke is ready to take Slayer and a further twenty carefully selected giant mantises to the mainland where he will track down the four men he plans to kill. His revenge on these four is all he cares about in the entire world. But man was never meant to attempt to tame such savage and ruthless beasts as these prehistoric insects....
Nace has managed to come up with possibly the wildest and most far fetched storyline that has ever existed. This is pulp horror at its absolute peak. A hate fuelled man who commands a small army of giant mantises, is out for revenge on four men who cut off his manhood. This is sheer pulp horror genius...
From the moment the mantises first grace the pages, the blood spill and sheer carnage is almost unrelenting until the novel crashes to its final ending. No exaggeration, this is splatter piled on splatter piled on splatter. Nace barely comes up for a breath before more bone crunching, head splitting, brain eating and blood drinking ensues once again.
Nace’s writing style is amateurish to say the least, throwing together a litany of clumsy and awkward sentences that seem to carrying on forever. The tale is so over-packed with splatter, that it appears to be repeating the same old carnage again and again.
However preposterous the concept of the novel is, Nace takes the storyline to even further degrees when the lead character of Dyke Mellis develops what appears to be some sort of mental connection with his lead mantis - Slayer. This badly developed and utterly ridiculous addition to the tale was clearly done because the author couldn’t think of a good way to get around the communication boundaries between Dyke and his mantis ‘friend’ Slayer. However laughable the storyline is, this laziness simply creates a head-in-hands moment of cringing for the reader.
Later on, our good friend Slayer decides to take a nice big juicy bite out of Dyke’s leg, chomping away one entire calf. If only the human body healed the way Nace seems to think it does. If it did, we’d be almost indestructible. A tourniquet and a bandage later and Dyke is running around once again, minus one entire calf!
Dyke finally begins his revenge, surprisingly starting off with his most hated of the four men; the ringleader of his brutal assault all those years ago – Pete Stuart. You would have thought that Nace would have saved Stuart for last, but no, he is the first to be dispatched in the all too familiar display of graphic carnage.
The storyline then follows Dyke as he enacts almost exactly the same revenge on each of the remaining three men and their families, until his mission in life is finally complete. By the third and forth such slaughter, the repetitiveness of this is beginning to get a little boring. However, Nace keeps ramming in page upon page of blood spill to keep the gore-fest running at full pelt.
The conclusion (with its minor twist laced with a healthy slab of irony) is as dramatic as the rest of the novel has been. The novel ends in the way it has been throughout; with gallons more blood spill and mass mutilation depicted in all its graphic detail.
For the unashamed pulpiness of the novel, I was so tempted to give the novel a high overall rating. Not to mention calling the main killer mantis ‘Slayer’ – you can almost hear ‘Angel of Death’ playing away in the background of each scene of mass carnage. But there are way too many aspects that stand against the novel. Nace’s writing style for one is far too amateurish to keep a good flow to the storyline going. Lack of variation makes the endless carnage become tiresome – perhaps the worst sin possible for a pulp horror novel. The storyline is too flat and singular, with little to no secondary elements to the tale developing along the storyline. But the final nail is put in the coffin by the repeated laziness of the author with various aspects of the story that have led Nace to come up with the most ridiculous cop-outs in the history of horror novels (and that really is quite some claim).
All in all, ‘Eat Them Alive’ is what it is. It’s pulp horror taken to its pulpy extremes. It’s both the epitome and the peak of the genre. It’s fast paced and packed with splatter almost from cover to cover. There’s no escaping it, this is a novel of enjoyment for those who really should know better. It’s got so many faults, but that’s almost what makes it so the much greater. I can’t rate it highly because that in itself would be an injustice on the books nature. It still remains the most ridiculous and wildly over-the-top pulp horror novel that there ever was. You’ll either love it or hate it. But I urge each and every one of you to read a copy. I promise you won’t regret it...
The novel runs for a total of 158 carnage filled pages.
May 23, 2024
Have you ever read the sun also rises by Ernest Hemingway? It’s the lost generation novel where the main character had his dick shot off in WW1 and now obsessively watches bullfights because it’s the only way he can feel anything. This book is a post-modern, deconstructive retelling of that. The only difference is that “Dyke” the main character had big Jim and the twins sliced off with a switchblade by the crew he tried to double cross. Instead of bullfights, he gets a near sexual thrill by watching his army of giant preying mantises tear off the limbs of victim after innocent victim and devour their entrails as they scream out their final breath.
This book is a cavalcade of atrocities, absolutely unrelenting, remorseless mutilation takes the place of a plot and professional authorship. It works though!like rubbernecking at a car crash, I felt like a scumbag for reading but I couldn’t stop!
I was so curious after hearing how unhinged this book is that I tried to get a paperback copy-good luck! They want a fortune for them and there’s no e-book, not even a crappy pdf.
I finally found a fan made audiobook on YouTube that was well done.
This book is a cavalcade of atrocities, absolutely unrelenting, remorseless mutilation takes the place of a plot and professional authorship. It works though!like rubbernecking at a car crash, I felt like a scumbag for reading but I couldn’t stop!
I was so curious after hearing how unhinged this book is that I tried to get a paperback copy-good luck! They want a fortune for them and there’s no e-book, not even a crappy pdf.
I finally found a fan made audiobook on YouTube that was well done.
Read
June 29, 2021"This is beauty, this is happiness, the kind of enjoyment I never expected to experience again! God, I'm hot all over, I'm rich, I'm magnificent, I'm a human being with human joy all over me!" - Dyke Mellis, upon seeing at least twenty people consumed by giant mantises
Last night, I finished reading this big bad bug, one of the most notorious and difficult to acquire Paperbacks from Hell. It's the very relatable story of Dyke Mellis, criminal mastermind, who by page 3 witnesses a swarm of giant praying mantises emerge from an earthquake-induced chasm in his island home and quickly descend upon the natives, greedily devouring their flesh and sucking the marrow from their bones. Like any reasonable soul, Dyke immediately thinks to himself, "Hmm. There's opportunity here." What proceeds is 150 pages of Dyke methodically capturing and training a number of the mantises to do his gory bidding: eat alive the three men who castrated and left him for dead 11 years prior, along with anyone else unfortunate enough to cross his path.
Suffice it to say, the novel is ludicrously blood-drenched, but in such a gratuitous, sloppy, repetitive, and perfunctory way that it fails to bring up the bile. From my perspective, that's all the better! I cherished every wildly inaccurate description of mantis anatomy and Dyke's endless comically megalomaniacal musings. Perhaps it’s not “A New Peak In Horror,” but a new nadir is special too.
P.S. My copy was probably chewed on by a mouse, but you never know...
Last night, I finished reading this big bad bug, one of the most notorious and difficult to acquire Paperbacks from Hell. It's the very relatable story of Dyke Mellis, criminal mastermind, who by page 3 witnesses a swarm of giant praying mantises emerge from an earthquake-induced chasm in his island home and quickly descend upon the natives, greedily devouring their flesh and sucking the marrow from their bones. Like any reasonable soul, Dyke immediately thinks to himself, "Hmm. There's opportunity here." What proceeds is 150 pages of Dyke methodically capturing and training a number of the mantises to do his gory bidding: eat alive the three men who castrated and left him for dead 11 years prior, along with anyone else unfortunate enough to cross his path.
Suffice it to say, the novel is ludicrously blood-drenched, but in such a gratuitous, sloppy, repetitive, and perfunctory way that it fails to bring up the bile. From my perspective, that's all the better! I cherished every wildly inaccurate description of mantis anatomy and Dyke's endless comically megalomaniacal musings. Perhaps it’s not “A New Peak In Horror,” but a new nadir is special too.
P.S. My copy was probably chewed on by a mouse, but you never know...
March 15, 2020
The greatest love story of all: a Man and his Man-Eating Mantis! “Eat Them Alive” is the book “Old Yeller” could have been... if Old Yeller ate more women and children.
August 17, 2022
This truly is an insane book.
September 25, 2017
Simulatenously the best and worst book about giant killer praying mantises ever written. Reads like an early James Herbert novel written by Tommy Wiseau. Hilariously bad, but I read this when I really needed a laugh, and it delivered in spades.
December 26, 2012
Rating this book is a challenge. If one rates it according to the quality of the prose, the richness of the narrative, and the depth of its characters, the review is a lowly one star. It fails miserably on all of these levels. If, however, one examines the book purely as a specimen of 1970s trash fiction, embracing the book's many warts as part of its ugly charm, then it's a classic of the genre deserving of five stars. Tricky.
A ridiculous gore-fest full of weak dialogue and violence the intensity of which is rivaled only by the author's limited lexicon in describing said violence, EAT THEM ALIVE is simultaneously awful and wonderful. The staggering amount of bloodshed (including, but not limited to, some intensely misogynistic sequences in which the protagonist's favorite trained monster lavishes "special" attentions on his female victims) and the simplistic forward thrust of the work--there aren't really any subplots to speak of--mark it as a hallmark of pulpy excess. Essentially the reader follows an unswerving trail of blood from Point A to Point B to Point C, with few convolutions in the journey. Yet despite the rudimentary craft of the piece, it's wholly enjoyable, assuming you have the stomach for it: EAT THEM ALIVE is so ineptly executed and so gratuitously over-the-top that one simply can't help but laugh out loud while reading it.
This reader can't help but wonder whether or not that was the (probably pseudonymous) author's intent.
A ridiculous gore-fest full of weak dialogue and violence the intensity of which is rivaled only by the author's limited lexicon in describing said violence, EAT THEM ALIVE is simultaneously awful and wonderful. The staggering amount of bloodshed (including, but not limited to, some intensely misogynistic sequences in which the protagonist's favorite trained monster lavishes "special" attentions on his female victims) and the simplistic forward thrust of the work--there aren't really any subplots to speak of--mark it as a hallmark of pulpy excess. Essentially the reader follows an unswerving trail of blood from Point A to Point B to Point C, with few convolutions in the journey. Yet despite the rudimentary craft of the piece, it's wholly enjoyable, assuming you have the stomach for it: EAT THEM ALIVE is so ineptly executed and so gratuitously over-the-top that one simply can't help but laugh out loud while reading it.
This reader can't help but wonder whether or not that was the (probably pseudonymous) author's intent.
April 10, 2018
Simultaneously the best and worst book I've ever read. It's poorly written, repetitive, absurd, vile and entirely original. Come for the giant trained mantis with a breast fetish; stay for the babies getting their brains sucked out.
December 4, 2022
Well, what can you say about a 1977 trash horror quickie involving giant praying mantises?
I bought this "in the wild" several years ago for $4, little realising it sells online for over $200, so I'm pretty chuffed to have it in my collection. I then heard it had quite the reputation as a nasty little cult item. So, as part of a read-a-thon that inspired me online, I finally decided to read it, to match the creature feature or monster reading prompt.
On one side of the coin, it's pretty terrible. On the other, it's highly entertaining in that 70s/80s trashy way, and I read it in one go.
The plot involves Dyke Mellis, a nasty type who has hidden away on the island Malpelo for the past 11 years after trying to double-cross his four accomplices in a robbery. He wasn't successful, and they beat and cut him and castrated him. He no longer feels like a man, and thirsts for revenge. He gets his chance when, from his boat, he witnesses Malpelo torn apart by an earthquake, and hundreds of giant, flesh-eating praying mantises emerge from the earth's core and start slaughtering the island inhabitants.
Dyke immediately decides that he now has the perfect way to getting revenge, by controlling the mantises and getting them to eat his enemies. As you do!
He captures the largest one, who he dubs Slayer, and begins to train him. There's plenty of gruesome munching (to the point where it gets repetitive) as Dyke brings both animal and human food to Slayer. In the last 50 odd pages of this 158 page book, Dyke finally sets about letting loose Slayer and some other mantises on his enemies and their families. There's lots of breasts, arms and legs being cut off and eaten, and heads cracked open to eat the brains, and marrow sucked out of bones, practically from start to finish.
No, it's not good. But it sure is entertaining! You won't read much else like it.
I bought this "in the wild" several years ago for $4, little realising it sells online for over $200, so I'm pretty chuffed to have it in my collection. I then heard it had quite the reputation as a nasty little cult item. So, as part of a read-a-thon that inspired me online, I finally decided to read it, to match the creature feature or monster reading prompt.
On one side of the coin, it's pretty terrible. On the other, it's highly entertaining in that 70s/80s trashy way, and I read it in one go.
The plot involves Dyke Mellis, a nasty type who has hidden away on the island Malpelo for the past 11 years after trying to double-cross his four accomplices in a robbery. He wasn't successful, and they beat and cut him and castrated him. He no longer feels like a man, and thirsts for revenge. He gets his chance when, from his boat, he witnesses Malpelo torn apart by an earthquake, and hundreds of giant, flesh-eating praying mantises emerge from the earth's core and start slaughtering the island inhabitants.
Dyke immediately decides that he now has the perfect way to getting revenge, by controlling the mantises and getting them to eat his enemies. As you do!
He captures the largest one, who he dubs Slayer, and begins to train him. There's plenty of gruesome munching (to the point where it gets repetitive) as Dyke brings both animal and human food to Slayer. In the last 50 odd pages of this 158 page book, Dyke finally sets about letting loose Slayer and some other mantises on his enemies and their families. There's lots of breasts, arms and legs being cut off and eaten, and heads cracked open to eat the brains, and marrow sucked out of bones, practically from start to finish.
No, it's not good. But it sure is entertaining! You won't read much else like it.
July 22, 2014
A mental book! Crazy bastard Dyke Mellis, captures a giant man-sized praying mantis (after an earthquake inexplicably tosses a shit-load of them out of the ground) and uses it to wreak his terrible revenge on four men who (for reasons I won't go into) chopped off his cock some eleven years previous.
The title tells you all you need to know. This isn't a love story. It's all about giant mantises eating people alive and, dear God, do they! The violence is so over the top it's hilarious. I don't think there's a part of the human anatomy which isn't torn off and eaten. (Always in excruciating detail.)
The whole book is wall-to-wall carnage, with a preposterous plot and terrible dialogue. I bought this years ago from one of Woolworths' bargain buckets, but couldn't muster up the enthusiasm to read it. Then, along came the booktubeathon, the perfect time to read all those crazy short books you've been saving up, and I momentarily lost my ability to reason and started reading.
Pierce Nate is a pseudonym, for whom, I don't think anyone knows. I don't think even the author does. He's probably blocked this travesty from his memory in a vain attempt to preserve his sanity.
Has to be experienced to be believed. Holy fucking shit! Four stars for sheer disgustingness. I'm off to vomit...
The title tells you all you need to know. This isn't a love story. It's all about giant mantises eating people alive and, dear God, do they! The violence is so over the top it's hilarious. I don't think there's a part of the human anatomy which isn't torn off and eaten. (Always in excruciating detail.)
The whole book is wall-to-wall carnage, with a preposterous plot and terrible dialogue. I bought this years ago from one of Woolworths' bargain buckets, but couldn't muster up the enthusiasm to read it. Then, along came the booktubeathon, the perfect time to read all those crazy short books you've been saving up, and I momentarily lost my ability to reason and started reading.
Pierce Nate is a pseudonym, for whom, I don't think anyone knows. I don't think even the author does. He's probably blocked this travesty from his memory in a vain attempt to preserve his sanity.
Has to be experienced to be believed. Holy fucking shit! Four stars for sheer disgustingness. I'm off to vomit...
February 3, 2020
Eat Them Alive is the epitome of pulpy trash horror.
As a comic the story would have suited the pages of Métal Hurlant / Heavy Metal / Schwermetall in the Seventies beautifully. It would also work nicely as a ridiculous aggressive and super-fast trash metal song.
As a piece of literature, even genre literature, it's an utter failure. But then you might want to check out yourself what it's all about.
I don't know whether there is anything quite like it.
The book has a cult following among fans of gory horror and it can be difficult and quite expensive to lay your hands on a copy. If you read German, you're in luck though as the book was published by Festa's Pulp Legends imprint in 2019, 42 years after its release in the US.
Was it worth the wait, you ask? No, not really.
As a comic the story would have suited the pages of Métal Hurlant / Heavy Metal / Schwermetall in the Seventies beautifully. It would also work nicely as a ridiculous aggressive and super-fast trash metal song.
As a piece of literature, even genre literature, it's an utter failure. But then you might want to check out yourself what it's all about.
I don't know whether there is anything quite like it.
The book has a cult following among fans of gory horror and it can be difficult and quite expensive to lay your hands on a copy. If you read German, you're in luck though as the book was published by Festa's Pulp Legends imprint in 2019, 42 years after its release in the US.
Was it worth the wait, you ask? No, not really.
June 4, 2022
Five Stars, because for Goodreads five stars equals "It was amazing," and I am amazed. Astounded, even—almost perturbed. A notorious (and notoriously hard-(and expensive)-to-find) Paperback From Hell, and one whose reputation is deserved. Judas Priest, what a ride.
The plot is like Stark's Parker crossed with Willard, except that Willard is called Slayer, and he's a giant man-eating mantis. The plot is repetitive, in itself and in every scene, featuring a worrying obsession with bloodletting, as the dubiously named Dyke takes his revenge on those who lopped off his dick and balls and stabbed him to death when he tried to double cross them. He's a megalomaniacal psychopath, prone to maniacal speechifying (even when there's nobody around to hear him), with an army of giant mantises at his beck and call, and they like eating breasts and sucking blood, and this goes on for 158 joyous, WTF pages and then it ends, with irony, because there's nothing else left.
The plot is like Stark's Parker crossed with Willard, except that Willard is called Slayer, and he's a giant man-eating mantis. The plot is repetitive, in itself and in every scene, featuring a worrying obsession with bloodletting, as the dubiously named Dyke takes his revenge on those who lopped off his dick and balls and stabbed him to death when he tried to double cross them. He's a megalomaniacal psychopath, prone to maniacal speechifying (even when there's nobody around to hear him), with an army of giant mantises at his beck and call, and they like eating breasts and sucking blood, and this goes on for 158 joyous, WTF pages and then it ends, with irony, because there's nothing else left.
January 11, 2021
It's not good. It's very bad. I can't give it 1 star because its very bad but very 'readable' - somehow.
The plot is your standard bad man has his willy lopped off by a bunch of other bad men and doesn't like it scenario but with added big green insects.
There's no characters or pace to speak of just a story that rolls downhill. Hitting the exact same blood and gut strewn rocks over and over and over again.
It's written by someone clearly working through some issues. I've read a suggestion that Pierce was a frustrated librarian but that suggests that they would have had access to a biology book or two before putting pen to paper (or crayon to toilet paper), or find and actually look at a photo of a mantis but, again - somehow, the mantises with hands sort of adds to the 'charm'
The plot is your standard bad man has his willy lopped off by a bunch of other bad men and doesn't like it scenario but with added big green insects.
There's no characters or pace to speak of just a story that rolls downhill. Hitting the exact same blood and gut strewn rocks over and over and over again.
It's written by someone clearly working through some issues. I've read a suggestion that Pierce was a frustrated librarian but that suggests that they would have had access to a biology book or two before putting pen to paper (or crayon to toilet paper), or find and actually look at a photo of a mantis but, again - somehow, the mantises with hands sort of adds to the 'charm'
February 25, 2022
Well worth the $100 I paid for my copy simply for the amount of "This is insanely sick! I must read this passage aloud to someone, anyone..now!"...moments. Fer sure an ultimate Paperback From Hell, primitive, crude, absurd, demented, entertaining junk; almost outsider art posing as perverted big bug horror: in short a major CHUNKBLOWER!!!!
January 18, 2024
Full review at:
https://gavcrimson.blogspot.com/2024/...
Ever since I started getting a taste for trash fiction, I had people telling me that I needed to read Eat Them Alive by Pierce Nace, that this was the ultimate bad taste book, the most nastiest, most bloodiest, most lacking in artistic merit piece of writing ever to darken the bookstands. Its plot alone... a castrated man seeks revenge on his torturers with the assistance of giant praying mantises... screams out for your attention. That is one hell of a pitch for a book.
Imagine every Video Nasty rolled into one, and then compressed into 158 pages...that’s Eat Them Alive. By rights this book should have been a first time writing effort by a 13 year old boy, who’d grow up to become a famous serial killer, causing people to look back on Eat Them Alive and say ‘why didn’t we see the warning signs when young Pierce Nace started writing those disgusting stories about giant praying mantises eating people’. The reality of who ‘Pierce Nace’ actually is, happens to be one of those cases where fact is stranger than fiction, and given that the fiction here involves a castrated man befriending a giant praying mantis, that gives you an idea of how strange the truth is.
Eat Them Alive’s obsessive, driving force is Dyke Mellis, a man without scruples... a man without stones, who has been left a shadow of himself after being tortured and castrated by his former friends. Having spent eleven long years keeping a low profile on his adopted home of Malpelo, a Caribbean Island, Dyke’s world is rocked by an Earthquake that releases hundreds and hundreds of giant praying mantises upon Malpelo. In the process, Dyke gets his zest for life back, and realises he gains enormous satisfaction from watching the mantises’ torture, dismember and devour his elderly neighbour, old Kello. “Now I’ve got something to live for...because I love watching a man being eaten by a monster! Maybe it’s a substitute for my lost virility, I don’t know. But I know it’s a joy I thought I’d never feel again”. Following this epiphany, Dyke sets out on a complex plan against the men who robbed him of his genitals. Deciding to try and capture one of the Mantises, then attempting to turn the mantis- who he names ‘Slayer’- into his instrument of revenge. All of this goes down in the first chapter.
One of the accusations frequently levelled at ‘animals attack’ pulp horror is that they tend to adhere to a wash, rinse, repeat formula... giant sized animals attack and kill a bunch of people, then they attack and kill another bunch of people... and so on, and so on, until a deus ex machina is discovered to curtail the beasts in the last chapter. After delivering the giant mantis carnage upfront, however, Eat Them Alive turns into a multi-genred affair. Unexpectedly taking on the appearance of a 1950s Juvenile Delinquent novel, when the focus turns to Dyke’s wayward childhood and the events that ultimately led to him losing his manhood. As an angry, mad at the world, punk, Dyke got into a knife fight at aged 15 with his own father, pulled the legs off small animals and enjoyed driving nails through the hands of bankers during robberies. One of the most unnerving aspects to Eat Them Alive is how casual and matter of fact it presents such anti-social behaviour, as if these were standard, youthful right of passages that Pierce Nace expects us all to be able to relate to. Needless to say if you do happen to enjoy pulling the legs off small animals and driving nails through people’s hands, then you’re gonna love Eat Them Alive.
Every character is this book is irredeemably cold blooded and without conscience, including the gang that Dyke becomes part of. One that consists of whites Zeb Hillburn and Kane Garrister, Native American Ryan Gaut, and ghetto firebrand Pete Stuart. Out of all the characters in this book Pete is the only one to hold a candle to Dyke when it comes to being a mean bastard. How mean is Pete Stuart? “His best leisure activity was chopping small animals to bits or maiming children who came close to him”, Pete also was “white enough to pass but gouging out the eyes of any man- or woman- who called him anything but black”. Pete also allows Pierce Nace to work race-hate elements into Eat Them Alive, making Pete a character so consumed by hatred towards non-blacks that he can barely get a sentence out without working in his favourite racial slur. “What about it, you dumb whiteys”, “you damn whiteys can come along or not”, “unlock the screen, old whitey”. It’s the first give-away that Eat Them Alive was the work of an American author, rather than a cheeky British hack trying to pass the buck and disguise their nationality by setting the book in the States and the Caribbean. ‘Whitey’ tending to be a racial insult that rarely travelled outside of America, whereas ‘honkey’ was the anti-white slur that took off in the UK, and the one that a British author would have gravitated towards.
A quick, painless death is a luxury that eludes everyone in Eat Them Alive. Prior to reading Nace’s book, I’d just gotten through Blood Worm (1987) by John Halkin, which I felt short charged the reader when it came to writing around deaths, preferring subtle metaphors for characters meeting their maker ‘he was falling, a long slow freefall...a rich velvet blackness’ over gory incidents. An accusation that you couldn’t aim at Eat Them Alive, which endlessly dwells on mantises plucking out eyeballs, biting off noses, severing limbs, yanking out intestines, severing heads, cracking skulls, eating brains. Nace’s writing never flinches or looks away until characters are reduced to well gnawed on bones. Deaths in Eat Them Alive inadvertently remind you of the song ‘Brave Sir Robin’ from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, with its lengthy list of indignities that Sir Robin isn’t afraid to have done to him “He was not in the least bit scared, to be mashed into a pulp. Or to have his eyes gouged out, and his elbows broken. To have his kneecaps split, and his body burned away, and his limbs all hacked and mangled…His head smashed in, and his heart cut out, and his liver removed” etc etc. That’s exactly how characters die in Eat Them Alive.
So just who was Pierce Nace? Trash fiction has seen many unlikely contributors whose real identities have turned out to be far removed from their writing. There was ‘Richard Allen’ whose skinhead novels caused his youthful readership to cast the author as a real life skin who earned extra money by writing about the racism, hooliganism and rape he got up to in-between novels. Whereas in reality Allen was a portly, middle aged Canadian hack by the name of James Moffatt, who lived in Devon. Then there was John Halkin, who when not writing pulp horror like ‘Slither’ and ‘Squelch’, held political aspirations, running as an MEP for the liberal democrat party under his real name John Parry. Even in this company though, the real identity of Pierce Nace takes some beating. It seems that when it came to writing a book likely to cause the average reader to throw up, the best man for the job was in fact a woman. The evidence as to the identity of the person behind the ‘Pierce Nace’ nom de plume, all pointing in the direction of Evelyn Pierce Nace, a housewife and part time secretary based out of Pampa, Texas. Nace was born Evelyn Louise Pierce in Kansas in 1912, making her in her mid-sixties when she wrote Eat Them Alive. Married to Delmar ‘Otis’ Nace since 1937, her writing career began in 1939. While Otis was off fighting in WW2, Evelyn sold short stories to magazines like ‘Romantic Love Stories’ and ‘Ideal Love’ a far cry from the gore epic that would become her magnum opus. A move into detective and true crime stories saw the creation of her ‘Pierce Nace’ pen name, an amalgamation of her and her husbands’ surnames, said to have been adopted out of fears that readers of Men’s Magazines wouldn’t accept a broad as a writer of pulp fiction. Going with the times, by the late sixties, Evelyn’s writing took a racy turn as co-author of sex-ed books like ‘A Doctor Dares You: Score Six for Sex’ (1969) and ‘Sex for Women over 40’ (1968) which tackled the taboo of sex being ‘increasingly pleasurable, even after the menopause’. The inevitable companion piece ‘Sex for Men over 40’ (1968) offers a possible insight into the genesis of Eat Them Alive. Did researching male sexual problems and frustrations lead Evelyn down a rabbit role, one that she found Dyke Mellis at the bottom of?
The revelation of the author’s gender sheds a whole new, unexpected light on Eat Them Alive. Whatever one makes of Nace’s writing- the crude, demented style here often belies a writer enjoying nearly four decades of being published- there can be little doubt that Evelyn Nace was a master of disguise. There is nothing remotely feminine about Eat Them Alive, with its themes of emasculation, revenge and male betrayal. Did all those years hiding her real identity from Men’s Magazine readers, cause Evelyn to adopt a hard boiled, hyper masculine facade to her writing? The ultimate humiliation of men in Eat Them Alive is not the destruction of their bodies, rather its being forced into showing their emotions in the company of other men. Only when he witnesses his enemies crying, pleading for their lives and that of their loved ones, does Dyke Mellis know true satisfaction. Even in this day and age society still tends to hold women to higher standards than men, expecting them to be a little more sensitive towards violence, especially violence towards animals and children. Expectations that are torn into dismembered chunks by Eat Them Alive. The level of animal abuse in this book is off the scale, and Eat Them Alive has no qualms about depicting babies being torn in half by greedy mantises, nor Zeb and Kane getting all nostalgic for “when we wacked off the ears of that kid in Dallas”. Good times, according to Zeb and Kane.
Eat Them Alive might be drowning in male castration anxiety, but Nace doesn’t let her own gender off the hook when it comes to sexual mutilation. Slayer turns out to be quite the boob crazy mantis, who just can’t get enough of tearing the tits off unfortunate females. In one depraved instance performing mass mastectomies on tribeswomen, chopping down on their breasts then leaving the rest for other, lesser mantises. “One by one he threw women to the ground and tore off their sweet-tasting breasts”. For all of the evidence that points to Evelyn Nace being the author of this book, it is still hard to get your head around the idea that a woman wrote a book in which her male lead fantasizes about joining praying mantises as they devour a woman’s private parts “he bent over the girl and filled his great maw with all that stamped the body as female. Watching, Dyke thought, God, I think I could eat that part myself”.
Given Evelyn Nace’s apparent lack of experience in writing horror, it is possible that the extremist elements of Eat Them Alive were purely accidental. If she had no reference point for pulp horror, and based Eat Them Alive off faded memories of Eisenhower-era monster movies that must have blew through Pampa in the 1950s, it is conceivable that she believed all horror films and books to be none stop orgies of blood and guts, and was unaware of the envelope pushing effort she had created. Whether it was through accident or design, Eat Them Alive, like Guy N Smith’s work, succeeded in dragging creature features of the Bert I. Gordon and AIP variety into the sicko, savage 1970s.
Like Smith’s books, Eat Them Alive is a work that seems destined to never translate to the big screen. Its concept demanding the kind of big budget Hollywood treatment that would also require its excessive gore to be watered down beyond recognition. True, in these days of CGI, Eat Them Alive might be pulled off on a lower-budget, but let’s be careful what we wish for. We have Dario Argento’s Dracula to remind us how shitty a CGI praying mantis can look. I wouldn’t wish that on ol’Slayer, and just who would play Dyke Mellis? In days gone by Klaus Kinski would have been a natural shoe-in for the role of a sexually frustrated megalomaniac, Harvey Keitel is always good for outbursts of self-pitying male wailing…but the only current actor who springs to mind is Nicolas Cage. Dyke Mellis’ unbalanced, blood caked, monologues are practically crying out for the Nic Cage treatment “I think I could see Slayer swim in a sea of blood- and I could swim in it with him, especially if it was the blood of people, of men, the four men I hate with all my guts…I could spend my whole life seeing him eat men alive”. Someone needs to slip Cage a copy of Eat Them Alive and bring him to the realization that his career so far has been but a prelude to playing Dyke Mellis.
Nace was to writing what Ed Wood was to filmmaking, and The Shaggs were to music. Their anti-professionalism creating a work far more memorable than had it been entrusted to competent individuals. In a disposable medium like pulp horror, where books were written to be consumed during plane journeys or cheap foreign holidays then forgotten about, Eat Them Alive is a keeper. Once read, impossible to unread, for better or ill, Eat Them Alive will stay with you forever. Its either a book you’ll take to your breast, or regard as the biggest, most insulting, piece of shit you’ve ever laid eyes on, there is no middle ground with Eat Them Alive. One small step for female writers, one giant leap for mantis kind, Eat Them Alive proved that a woman’s place isn’t in the kitchen, it is being hunched over a typewriter, knocking out page after page of people being dismembered by giant mantises. Evelyn Pierce Nace’s lasting gift to humanity being images of Dyke Mellis and Slayer forever swimming together in a sea of human blood.
https://gavcrimson.blogspot.com/2024/...
Ever since I started getting a taste for trash fiction, I had people telling me that I needed to read Eat Them Alive by Pierce Nace, that this was the ultimate bad taste book, the most nastiest, most bloodiest, most lacking in artistic merit piece of writing ever to darken the bookstands. Its plot alone... a castrated man seeks revenge on his torturers with the assistance of giant praying mantises... screams out for your attention. That is one hell of a pitch for a book.
Imagine every Video Nasty rolled into one, and then compressed into 158 pages...that’s Eat Them Alive. By rights this book should have been a first time writing effort by a 13 year old boy, who’d grow up to become a famous serial killer, causing people to look back on Eat Them Alive and say ‘why didn’t we see the warning signs when young Pierce Nace started writing those disgusting stories about giant praying mantises eating people’. The reality of who ‘Pierce Nace’ actually is, happens to be one of those cases where fact is stranger than fiction, and given that the fiction here involves a castrated man befriending a giant praying mantis, that gives you an idea of how strange the truth is.
Eat Them Alive’s obsessive, driving force is Dyke Mellis, a man without scruples... a man without stones, who has been left a shadow of himself after being tortured and castrated by his former friends. Having spent eleven long years keeping a low profile on his adopted home of Malpelo, a Caribbean Island, Dyke’s world is rocked by an Earthquake that releases hundreds and hundreds of giant praying mantises upon Malpelo. In the process, Dyke gets his zest for life back, and realises he gains enormous satisfaction from watching the mantises’ torture, dismember and devour his elderly neighbour, old Kello. “Now I’ve got something to live for...because I love watching a man being eaten by a monster! Maybe it’s a substitute for my lost virility, I don’t know. But I know it’s a joy I thought I’d never feel again”. Following this epiphany, Dyke sets out on a complex plan against the men who robbed him of his genitals. Deciding to try and capture one of the Mantises, then attempting to turn the mantis- who he names ‘Slayer’- into his instrument of revenge. All of this goes down in the first chapter.
One of the accusations frequently levelled at ‘animals attack’ pulp horror is that they tend to adhere to a wash, rinse, repeat formula... giant sized animals attack and kill a bunch of people, then they attack and kill another bunch of people... and so on, and so on, until a deus ex machina is discovered to curtail the beasts in the last chapter. After delivering the giant mantis carnage upfront, however, Eat Them Alive turns into a multi-genred affair. Unexpectedly taking on the appearance of a 1950s Juvenile Delinquent novel, when the focus turns to Dyke’s wayward childhood and the events that ultimately led to him losing his manhood. As an angry, mad at the world, punk, Dyke got into a knife fight at aged 15 with his own father, pulled the legs off small animals and enjoyed driving nails through the hands of bankers during robberies. One of the most unnerving aspects to Eat Them Alive is how casual and matter of fact it presents such anti-social behaviour, as if these were standard, youthful right of passages that Pierce Nace expects us all to be able to relate to. Needless to say if you do happen to enjoy pulling the legs off small animals and driving nails through people’s hands, then you’re gonna love Eat Them Alive.
Every character is this book is irredeemably cold blooded and without conscience, including the gang that Dyke becomes part of. One that consists of whites Zeb Hillburn and Kane Garrister, Native American Ryan Gaut, and ghetto firebrand Pete Stuart. Out of all the characters in this book Pete is the only one to hold a candle to Dyke when it comes to being a mean bastard. How mean is Pete Stuart? “His best leisure activity was chopping small animals to bits or maiming children who came close to him”, Pete also was “white enough to pass but gouging out the eyes of any man- or woman- who called him anything but black”. Pete also allows Pierce Nace to work race-hate elements into Eat Them Alive, making Pete a character so consumed by hatred towards non-blacks that he can barely get a sentence out without working in his favourite racial slur. “What about it, you dumb whiteys”, “you damn whiteys can come along or not”, “unlock the screen, old whitey”. It’s the first give-away that Eat Them Alive was the work of an American author, rather than a cheeky British hack trying to pass the buck and disguise their nationality by setting the book in the States and the Caribbean. ‘Whitey’ tending to be a racial insult that rarely travelled outside of America, whereas ‘honkey’ was the anti-white slur that took off in the UK, and the one that a British author would have gravitated towards.
A quick, painless death is a luxury that eludes everyone in Eat Them Alive. Prior to reading Nace’s book, I’d just gotten through Blood Worm (1987) by John Halkin, which I felt short charged the reader when it came to writing around deaths, preferring subtle metaphors for characters meeting their maker ‘he was falling, a long slow freefall...a rich velvet blackness’ over gory incidents. An accusation that you couldn’t aim at Eat Them Alive, which endlessly dwells on mantises plucking out eyeballs, biting off noses, severing limbs, yanking out intestines, severing heads, cracking skulls, eating brains. Nace’s writing never flinches or looks away until characters are reduced to well gnawed on bones. Deaths in Eat Them Alive inadvertently remind you of the song ‘Brave Sir Robin’ from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, with its lengthy list of indignities that Sir Robin isn’t afraid to have done to him “He was not in the least bit scared, to be mashed into a pulp. Or to have his eyes gouged out, and his elbows broken. To have his kneecaps split, and his body burned away, and his limbs all hacked and mangled…His head smashed in, and his heart cut out, and his liver removed” etc etc. That’s exactly how characters die in Eat Them Alive.
So just who was Pierce Nace? Trash fiction has seen many unlikely contributors whose real identities have turned out to be far removed from their writing. There was ‘Richard Allen’ whose skinhead novels caused his youthful readership to cast the author as a real life skin who earned extra money by writing about the racism, hooliganism and rape he got up to in-between novels. Whereas in reality Allen was a portly, middle aged Canadian hack by the name of James Moffatt, who lived in Devon. Then there was John Halkin, who when not writing pulp horror like ‘Slither’ and ‘Squelch’, held political aspirations, running as an MEP for the liberal democrat party under his real name John Parry. Even in this company though, the real identity of Pierce Nace takes some beating. It seems that when it came to writing a book likely to cause the average reader to throw up, the best man for the job was in fact a woman. The evidence as to the identity of the person behind the ‘Pierce Nace’ nom de plume, all pointing in the direction of Evelyn Pierce Nace, a housewife and part time secretary based out of Pampa, Texas. Nace was born Evelyn Louise Pierce in Kansas in 1912, making her in her mid-sixties when she wrote Eat Them Alive. Married to Delmar ‘Otis’ Nace since 1937, her writing career began in 1939. While Otis was off fighting in WW2, Evelyn sold short stories to magazines like ‘Romantic Love Stories’ and ‘Ideal Love’ a far cry from the gore epic that would become her magnum opus. A move into detective and true crime stories saw the creation of her ‘Pierce Nace’ pen name, an amalgamation of her and her husbands’ surnames, said to have been adopted out of fears that readers of Men’s Magazines wouldn’t accept a broad as a writer of pulp fiction. Going with the times, by the late sixties, Evelyn’s writing took a racy turn as co-author of sex-ed books like ‘A Doctor Dares You: Score Six for Sex’ (1969) and ‘Sex for Women over 40’ (1968) which tackled the taboo of sex being ‘increasingly pleasurable, even after the menopause’. The inevitable companion piece ‘Sex for Men over 40’ (1968) offers a possible insight into the genesis of Eat Them Alive. Did researching male sexual problems and frustrations lead Evelyn down a rabbit role, one that she found Dyke Mellis at the bottom of?
The revelation of the author’s gender sheds a whole new, unexpected light on Eat Them Alive. Whatever one makes of Nace’s writing- the crude, demented style here often belies a writer enjoying nearly four decades of being published- there can be little doubt that Evelyn Nace was a master of disguise. There is nothing remotely feminine about Eat Them Alive, with its themes of emasculation, revenge and male betrayal. Did all those years hiding her real identity from Men’s Magazine readers, cause Evelyn to adopt a hard boiled, hyper masculine facade to her writing? The ultimate humiliation of men in Eat Them Alive is not the destruction of their bodies, rather its being forced into showing their emotions in the company of other men. Only when he witnesses his enemies crying, pleading for their lives and that of their loved ones, does Dyke Mellis know true satisfaction. Even in this day and age society still tends to hold women to higher standards than men, expecting them to be a little more sensitive towards violence, especially violence towards animals and children. Expectations that are torn into dismembered chunks by Eat Them Alive. The level of animal abuse in this book is off the scale, and Eat Them Alive has no qualms about depicting babies being torn in half by greedy mantises, nor Zeb and Kane getting all nostalgic for “when we wacked off the ears of that kid in Dallas”. Good times, according to Zeb and Kane.
Eat Them Alive might be drowning in male castration anxiety, but Nace doesn’t let her own gender off the hook when it comes to sexual mutilation. Slayer turns out to be quite the boob crazy mantis, who just can’t get enough of tearing the tits off unfortunate females. In one depraved instance performing mass mastectomies on tribeswomen, chopping down on their breasts then leaving the rest for other, lesser mantises. “One by one he threw women to the ground and tore off their sweet-tasting breasts”. For all of the evidence that points to Evelyn Nace being the author of this book, it is still hard to get your head around the idea that a woman wrote a book in which her male lead fantasizes about joining praying mantises as they devour a woman’s private parts “he bent over the girl and filled his great maw with all that stamped the body as female. Watching, Dyke thought, God, I think I could eat that part myself”.
Given Evelyn Nace’s apparent lack of experience in writing horror, it is possible that the extremist elements of Eat Them Alive were purely accidental. If she had no reference point for pulp horror, and based Eat Them Alive off faded memories of Eisenhower-era monster movies that must have blew through Pampa in the 1950s, it is conceivable that she believed all horror films and books to be none stop orgies of blood and guts, and was unaware of the envelope pushing effort she had created. Whether it was through accident or design, Eat Them Alive, like Guy N Smith’s work, succeeded in dragging creature features of the Bert I. Gordon and AIP variety into the sicko, savage 1970s.
Like Smith’s books, Eat Them Alive is a work that seems destined to never translate to the big screen. Its concept demanding the kind of big budget Hollywood treatment that would also require its excessive gore to be watered down beyond recognition. True, in these days of CGI, Eat Them Alive might be pulled off on a lower-budget, but let’s be careful what we wish for. We have Dario Argento’s Dracula to remind us how shitty a CGI praying mantis can look. I wouldn’t wish that on ol’Slayer, and just who would play Dyke Mellis? In days gone by Klaus Kinski would have been a natural shoe-in for the role of a sexually frustrated megalomaniac, Harvey Keitel is always good for outbursts of self-pitying male wailing…but the only current actor who springs to mind is Nicolas Cage. Dyke Mellis’ unbalanced, blood caked, monologues are practically crying out for the Nic Cage treatment “I think I could see Slayer swim in a sea of blood- and I could swim in it with him, especially if it was the blood of people, of men, the four men I hate with all my guts…I could spend my whole life seeing him eat men alive”. Someone needs to slip Cage a copy of Eat Them Alive and bring him to the realization that his career so far has been but a prelude to playing Dyke Mellis.
Nace was to writing what Ed Wood was to filmmaking, and The Shaggs were to music. Their anti-professionalism creating a work far more memorable than had it been entrusted to competent individuals. In a disposable medium like pulp horror, where books were written to be consumed during plane journeys or cheap foreign holidays then forgotten about, Eat Them Alive is a keeper. Once read, impossible to unread, for better or ill, Eat Them Alive will stay with you forever. Its either a book you’ll take to your breast, or regard as the biggest, most insulting, piece of shit you’ve ever laid eyes on, there is no middle ground with Eat Them Alive. One small step for female writers, one giant leap for mantis kind, Eat Them Alive proved that a woman’s place isn’t in the kitchen, it is being hunched over a typewriter, knocking out page after page of people being dismembered by giant mantises. Evelyn Pierce Nace’s lasting gift to humanity being images of Dyke Mellis and Slayer forever swimming together in a sea of human blood.
November 1, 2023
This novel is an offence to literature and an insult to the intelligence of the average reader. That said, this is the second time I've read this book.
I first read Eat Them Alive more than thirty years ago when I was a teenager. I remember thinking it was sick, and the goriest thing ever, but I also found it amusing and was surprised that anyone could get away with writing such depravity. Now, as a more mature reader, I see it for what it is: pure torture porn.
Of the 158 pages in the book, I would estimate that at least 120 of them contain depictions of mutilation - if not actual, then the main character fantasizing about it. The author hurries us from one scene of slaughter to the next, barely stopping in between and skimming over any details which don't involve people being torn limb from limb and devoured. There are really only five characters in the book - the rest of people, if they are even given names, are essentially just food - and of those 5, not one has any redeeming feature. They are all merciless torturers and killers.
The revenge plot the story hinges on is weak, but that pales in insignificance to the far-fetched way in which Dyke - the main character - manages to obtain and train his army of huge insect killers. Conveniently, he just happens to have a cage laying about that he can use and somehow these beasts have survived for - we are told, millions of years, under the earth with no apparent source of food other than each other. It is futile to pick holes in the story that has no real effort put into it: I mention these two things just to give samples of how silly the story is, but belief has to be suspended for all 158 pages - the story, such as it is, exists only to move us from one horrific scene to the next, aided by the terribly written exposition from Dyke.
It is hard to believe that all of this was supposedly written by a church-going middle-aged woman writing under a pen name. I can only imagine there were some huge psychological problems as there is really nothing praiseworthy in the whole book. I suspect that even readers who might savour reading about such extreme brutality will quickly tire of how repetitive it all is: the haste with which the author covers everything that isn't bloodshed highlights the hurry to get to 'the good bits', but the author's ability even here is lacking. Somehow, the author is unable to vary the descriptions and language and we are given almost identical scenes over and over throughout the whole novel to the point that towards the end the author has seemingly tired of it herself and just writes something to the effect of 'and they ate up the populace of one village and then the next'. The author then hurriedly ends the novel in the space of about 5 pages with utterly ludicrous final scenes that I recall even teenage me thinking was rushed and far-fetched (even giving huge allowances for the material). Quite how this terrible writer managed to get this published is beyond me - I do wonder if it was part of a bet over the author's ability to write the most depraved book possible with no other quality or merit to it: if this was the case, the author succeeded brilliantly.
In summary, if you are a fan of splatter horror - it is surely worth a read, although you will almost certainly find it laughably bad. For any other readers, the constant remorseless slayings of men, women, children and even infants will make you feel dirty for reading this mess of a novel. There is a good reason why this book is so rare - I expect many copies were destroyed in disgust.
I first read Eat Them Alive more than thirty years ago when I was a teenager. I remember thinking it was sick, and the goriest thing ever, but I also found it amusing and was surprised that anyone could get away with writing such depravity. Now, as a more mature reader, I see it for what it is: pure torture porn.
Of the 158 pages in the book, I would estimate that at least 120 of them contain depictions of mutilation - if not actual, then the main character fantasizing about it. The author hurries us from one scene of slaughter to the next, barely stopping in between and skimming over any details which don't involve people being torn limb from limb and devoured. There are really only five characters in the book - the rest of people, if they are even given names, are essentially just food - and of those 5, not one has any redeeming feature. They are all merciless torturers and killers.
The revenge plot the story hinges on is weak, but that pales in insignificance to the far-fetched way in which Dyke - the main character - manages to obtain and train his army of huge insect killers. Conveniently, he just happens to have a cage laying about that he can use and somehow these beasts have survived for - we are told, millions of years, under the earth with no apparent source of food other than each other. It is futile to pick holes in the story that has no real effort put into it: I mention these two things just to give samples of how silly the story is, but belief has to be suspended for all 158 pages - the story, such as it is, exists only to move us from one horrific scene to the next, aided by the terribly written exposition from Dyke.
It is hard to believe that all of this was supposedly written by a church-going middle-aged woman writing under a pen name. I can only imagine there were some huge psychological problems as there is really nothing praiseworthy in the whole book. I suspect that even readers who might savour reading about such extreme brutality will quickly tire of how repetitive it all is: the haste with which the author covers everything that isn't bloodshed highlights the hurry to get to 'the good bits', but the author's ability even here is lacking. Somehow, the author is unable to vary the descriptions and language and we are given almost identical scenes over and over throughout the whole novel to the point that towards the end the author has seemingly tired of it herself and just writes something to the effect of 'and they ate up the populace of one village and then the next'. The author then hurriedly ends the novel in the space of about 5 pages with utterly ludicrous final scenes that I recall even teenage me thinking was rushed and far-fetched (even giving huge allowances for the material). Quite how this terrible writer managed to get this published is beyond me - I do wonder if it was part of a bet over the author's ability to write the most depraved book possible with no other quality or merit to it: if this was the case, the author succeeded brilliantly.
In summary, if you are a fan of splatter horror - it is surely worth a read, although you will almost certainly find it laughably bad. For any other readers, the constant remorseless slayings of men, women, children and even infants will make you feel dirty for reading this mess of a novel. There is a good reason why this book is so rare - I expect many copies were destroyed in disgust.
June 15, 2024
An absolutely insane schlock horror 'classick'. MAN, what a crazy ass book. Is it 'good' in the traditional sense of that word? Absolutely not. But, it was an incredibly entertaining read. This book is special. Reading this book is a special experience, one quite rare in 'literature'. It is as close to the giddy excitement of viewing a truly terrible Z grade horror movie, where you cannot believe what you are seeing, shaking your head and laughing out loud as you watch, in book form. It's terribleness is exciting, keeps you glued to the page.
I almost gave it five stars, but it is quite terrible, in the classic sense of the term, so I am giving 4 stars, based solely on the sick joy reading it gave me, not any sort of traditional merits of literature. For pure, Z Grade, tasteless schlock horror, you really can't do better than this. And the fact that it was apparently written by an elderly woman using a pseudonym makes it all the more special.
I almost gave it five stars, but it is quite terrible, in the classic sense of the term, so I am giving 4 stars, based solely on the sick joy reading it gave me, not any sort of traditional merits of literature. For pure, Z Grade, tasteless schlock horror, you really can't do better than this. And the fact that it was apparently written by an elderly woman using a pseudonym makes it all the more special.
Read
December 27, 2021This book is exactly what I expected. Bloody, a strange semi-plot that's really just an excuse for blood and violence.
It did not suprise me one bit to see that on the back of my copy, there are advertisements for books.
They are Frzier Hunt's "The Untold Story of Douglas MacArthur," Georggrey Marcus's "The Maiden Voyage," and Edgar Hilsenrath's "The Nazi Who Lived As a Jew." The last one is about a Nazi who steals one of his victim's identity and goes to live in Israel.
These are fitting advertisements. "Eat Them Alive" is a pulp novel. It will not rise above your expectations. It will not disappoint you if you know what you want. It's bloody, repetive, and wildly entertaining in how stupid it is.
It did not suprise me one bit to see that on the back of my copy, there are advertisements for books.
They are Frzier Hunt's "The Untold Story of Douglas MacArthur," Georggrey Marcus's "The Maiden Voyage," and Edgar Hilsenrath's "The Nazi Who Lived As a Jew." The last one is about a Nazi who steals one of his victim's identity and goes to live in Israel.
These are fitting advertisements. "Eat Them Alive" is a pulp novel. It will not rise above your expectations. It will not disappoint you if you know what you want. It's bloody, repetive, and wildly entertaining in how stupid it is.
October 10, 2019
i like the story but the writing style was atrocious... dyke starts every second sentence with 'god,....' which got on my nerves pretty quickly. his monologues and the dialogues in general were one of the most stiff and unnatural sounding sentences i have read in my entire life.
also, who in the hell sees gigantic praying mantises and his first thought is 'i could train them as my personal revenge army' and not getting the fuck away from those things??? not even a psychopath like dyke imho... but okay, whatever xD
also, who in the hell sees gigantic praying mantises and his first thought is 'i could train them as my personal revenge army' and not getting the fuck away from those things??? not even a psychopath like dyke imho... but okay, whatever xD
April 2, 2022
If you liked The Rats and loved Night of The Crabs, then you will adore Eat Them Alive!! Without doubt it is the apex of 70’s pulp gore and despite being one of the worst written books I’ve ever read, the sheer audacity of it will amaze!! Not to mention the non-stop and EXTREMELY graphic torture-by-giant-mantis scenes, which alone are worth the entrance fee!!! Not for the weak of stomach or for the easily offended, but for horror fans....what a treat!!!!
September 2, 2023
Wow, this one is infamous for good reason. The seemingly endless tearing and devouring of flesh goes well with the insane ramblings of one of the most despicable characters ever committed to page. For gorehounds this can be a bit repetitive, but somehow also morbidly satisfying. Its not well written and not overlong, with a strange twist at the end that i didnt see coming. Truly one of a kind and worth seeking.
November 9, 2018
Violent and gory, with a despicable human being as our main guy. It gets repetitive near the end and the ultraviolence becomes a bit sickening, but the story is unique and memorable (I read this a long time ago but I still remember the story well, so that's something). If you miss old-school pulp fiction and are not squeamish, then check it out.
March 11, 2018
Very gory simple read.
February 28, 2019
I may as well quit reading because nothing will be this good again. I spent 75 dollars on this and regret nothing.
May 9, 2020
The idea is quiet original, the narrative not so good. It doesn't blew your mind, but makes you keep reading. It's an exciting action movie. Well, book.
March 22, 2023
I'm well used to toilet reading, but this one's the actual toilet!
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